Ed McGinty, Terence Winter, and Vicki Gold Levi (from left to right) make sure that the Prohibition-era Atlantic City depicted on Boardwalk Empire is as period-accurate as possible. Illustration: Simon Lutrin/Wired

Edward McGinty, Terence Winter and Vicki Gold Levi (from left to right) make sure that the Prohibition-era Atlantic City depicted on Boardwalk Empire is as period-accurate as possible.Illustration: Simon Lutrin/Wired

When Terence Winter was developing Boardwalk Empire, one of the things he knew he didn’t want to do was make another Deadwood.

Not that he didn’t like the foul-mouthed HBO western — in fact, he loved it — but the show’s plethora of historical characters and events made it too easily spoiled by Google. Finding out how Al Swearengen or Calamity Jane met their ends was just a click away.

Behind every smart TV show, there’s a tireless technical adviser, researcher or producer who sweats the details. Wired talks with the fact-checkers who keep the angry nerds at bay.

“Every time Wild Bill Hickok would walk in, I’d go, ‘Any minute now he’s going to be sitting there at a card table, and get dealt aces and eights,” Winter said in an interview with Wired, referencing Hickok’s famous “dead man’s hand.” “It’s like looking through a crystal ball and you’re like, ‘Oh God, is that how it ends?’ Sometimes it’s better not to know.”

So when Winter was creating Boardwalk Empire, which returns to HBO for its third season Sunday, he opted to fictionalize his characters — particularly Enoch “Nucky” Thompson (played by Steve Buscemi), the character based on real-world Atlantic City figure Enoch “Nucky” Johnson. Winter also opted to get a crew of detail-oriented researchers who could make sure everything else was as historically accurate as possible.

Enter Edward McGinty and Vicki Gold Levi — two Atlantic City natives whose connection to the town goes back to the days of Prohibition (McGinty’s grandfather worked at the Ritz-Carlton when the real Nucky was living there; Levi met the man himself as a kid). These two Encyclopedia Brown types aren’t the whole of the show’s research operation — costumers and set designers do their own backgrounding as well — and neither take any more credit for the accuracy of the show than they feel they deserve.

“This whole production is just a research factory,” McGinty told Wired.

Wired asked Winter, McGinty and Levi to open up that factory, and in the process got the details about putting truth into historical fiction, the Great Moustache Debate during Season 2, Lucky Luciano giving himself gonorrhea, going to the Museum of Sex in New York for “research,” and the softer side of the real Al Capone that’s rarely seen on TV (until now).

TV Fact-Checkers: Terence Winter, Edward McGinty and Vicki Gold Levi

Titles: Winter is executive producer and writer; McGinty is research adviser and plays the character Ward Boss Boyd; Levi is historical consultant for Boardwalk Empire (which airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on HBO).

Bona fides: Winter is something of a history geek and also won Emmys for his work as a writer and producer on The Sopranos. McGinty has a master’s in film from Columbia University and rich family history in Atlantic City. Levi is the co-author of Atlantic City: 125 Years of Ocean Madness and has advised on lots of movies about the New Jersey city.

Obviously Boardwalk Empire is historical fiction, but how much is real history and how much is fiction?

Terence Winter: Starting out, I had inherited the book [Boardwalk Empire by Nelson Johnson]. HBO gave me the book and said, “Why don’t you read this, and see if you think there’s a series there.” The book itself is really the history of Atlantic City. There was a chapter on the real Nucky Johnson, and he’s the guy who ran the town during Prohibition. I thought, “OK, that’s the guy. This is the era I’d like to explore.” Then everything else really from there was my own invention. Taking the character Nucky, and then, early on I made the decision to fictionalize him.

(Spoiler alert: Minor plot points follow.)

“I was a big fan of Deadwood, but once I found out that all those people were real, the first thing I did was Google everybody.”

— Terence Winter

I’ve talked about this before, but I was inspired to fictionalize as many people as possible because of Deadwood, which I loved. I was a big fan, but once I found out that all those people were real, the first thing I did was Google everybody. Then I was ahead of the story. I thought, “Wow. I really wish I didn’t know, for example, that Al Swearengen lived till the 20th century, because it took a lot of the jeopardy of the show away from me. I was just waiting for events to get checked off. Even Swearengen died like he was destitute. I think he died running for a train or something. It was one of these really pathetic deaths.

I guess you’d say the same thing about watching Titanic. We all know that there’s an iceberg out there. That was what was great about Inglourious Basterds when Hitler died in a movie theater. It was like, good for him. I just know I’m going to be out there explaining to my kids one day, “No, Hitler did not die in a movie theater fire actually. It was a bunker in Germany.” But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

How do you avoid doing the same thing with your characters?

Winter: I knew we had a few people — Al Capone, Arnold Rothstein, Lucky Luciano — who I knew I could not deviate their major life arcs. I’m not going to kill Capone off in 1925. The guy lived till the ’40s. Everywhere along the line, whenever I felt I could fictionalize a character, I would, starting with Nucky.

I didn’t want to be beholden to the actual Nucky Johnson’s life, because my Nucky I would like to have do things that the real Nucky probably didn’t do. Again, it’s partly to be able to surprise the audience, and partly because I don’t know if the real Nucky has relatives that are still living who are going to watch and say, “My uncle never murdered nine people” or whatever I want to have my guy do. That was the decision going into it.

Vicki Gold Levi: Nucky Johnson is not Nucky Thompson, and Nucky Thompson is not Nucky Johnson. Nucky Johnson didn’t murder anybody. I mean, he may have ordered it, I don’t know. I met Nucky when I was little – he was like Boss Tweed in Tammany Hall. He wasn’t a murderer. They’re taking [Nucky Thompson] down that gangster road.

Winter: In terms of the overall history, I really felt, as far as how the characters interact with each other, I always just tried to be true to the spirit of who these people were, again, adhering to their life stories. Obviously, Al Capone was based in Chicago. He had his rise through the ranks in Chicago, and being, basically, the king of that world, and I won’t deviate from that.

But, Al also wasn’t friends with the real Nucky. Johnny Torrio wasn’t friends with the real Nucky, though he did spend a certain amount of time in Atlantic City. Same thing with Rothstein, same thing with Luciano. I have license then to say, “OK, I know these guys knew the real Nucky. They did spend time there.” I can then comfortably create fictional relationships for them with people who they may or may not have known. For example, Al Capone may very well have been friends with a guy like [Michael Pitt’s character] Jimmy Darmody, who ultimately became a footnote in mob history because he died in 1921.

How familiar are the actors with these backstories?

Edward McGinty: The actors that play the gangsters are deeply researched on who their characters are, and I’d say probably know more than we do. We had them in Season 1 to talk to the writers about their particular characters. Michael Pitt was really, really a voracious researcher. He would always ask for a lot of information, stuff about World War I, that type of thing.

That’s surprising since Jimmy isn’t based on a real person.

McGinty: No, that was a fictional character that Terry came up with on his own accord. That’s what we’re playing with, real characters by name playing within a fictional world. It’s interesting because you’re able to connect the dots with the real characters through the fictional characters. It’s a really interesting playground to play in.

What about something like Capone’s deaf son, who plays a bigger role in the upcoming season’s events? Is that based on reality?

Winter: Yeah. It was congenital syphilis. Capone died of syphilis. Unbeknownst to him, he had syphilis when he impregnated his wife. His son was actually born with hearing problems because of that. Sonny was his son’s name, they took him into various hearing specialists. He had surgery, and was at least partially deaf for his entire life. That’s, again, a great detail about Capone’s life. I don’t know that it’s ever been depicted or even mentioned in any movie about Capone.

That’s the great luxury of doing a drama series that can run for dozens and dozens of hours. You have the opportunity to really delve deeply into the characters’ lives. Usually, in any movie it’s Capone at the height of his power. Because of when this show started, I got to see Capone as a kid. He was just a chubby kid who was somebody’s driver and they don’t know his name. That’s Al Capone. So, you get to go home with Al Capone, and see his family and his kid. It’s a lot more than just this scar-faced guy chomping the cigar and beating people. God willing, we’ll get to that too. I don’t know who that Capone was before he was that guy. That, for me, made it 100 times more interesting.

How important are the little historical accuracies? The real Nucky Johnson actually always wore the red carnation, which seems to be used in your show. Are there other examples like that where the details are real, even if the overall story is a bit fictionalized?

Levi: My strength in working with a lot of the theatrical things is the big picture. I don’t get mired down in, “Well, that didn’t happen exactly on that day at that place!” I understand there’s an arc of historical fiction here.

Winter: Arnold Rothstein almost entirely subsisted on milk and cake, which we’ve sort of made a point of that. You generally always see him drinking milk. He also for some reason believed that fresh figs were extremely healthful, so, usually you’ll see a bowl of fresh figs around. Rothstein will be eating them, occasionally. It’s very subtle. This season coming up, this is just a physical characteristic, Dean O’Banion in the Chicago flower shop did actually walk with a limp. And our actor walks with a limp.

We try to always find out the little nuances. Benny Siegel is portrayed as a really sort of wild guy. He got the name “Bugsy” because people thought he was crazy. He would just go and blurt out almost like Tourette’s-y kind of things. We’ve had our actor do that a few times, just to show that people thought he was insane.

We’re just really trying to adhere to the little details of who people are. Same thing with Harry Daugherty, the attorney general, and his accomplice Jess Smith. There was some speculation that these guys might be lovers — they shared an apartment together — but it was never really proven. So, we’ve sort of depicted them … it’s very ambiguous. You don’t really know because we didn’t really know. We said, “You know what? We’ll just depict the same way that they were depicted to America, where you go, ‘Are they a couple, or are they just friends?'” Just very subtle little things, the way they look at each other, the way they refer to each other. It’s never overt but it’s there, and it’s based on the history of what we read about them.

“I thought, ‘OK. This guy’s a murderer and this obvious sociopath, but now suddenly he’s Mr. Sensitive and he doesn’t want to spread gonorrhea?’ What I think is really going on here is he has sexual dysfunction.”

— Terence Winter

Lucky Luciano is another example. This was my choice. Early on in the research, I read Luciano’s biography, which talked about the idea that he, to get out of service in World War I, intentionally had himself infected with gonorrhea. That was a way out. Yeah, great idea, when there’s no cure. The treatments for it were horrific. We actually depicted that in an episode, too. These syringes full of, I think it was mercury, shot down your urethra.

Then, in his biography, he talked about the idea that he avoided a lot of intimate encounters with women over the years, even though he had women throwing themselves at him. He avoided it because he felt that he wasn’t quite sure if the gonorrhea ever completely went away, and he didn’t want to infect anybody else. I read this and I thought, “OK. This guy’s a murderer and this obvious sociopath, but now suddenly he’s Mr. Sensitive and he doesn’t want to spread gonorrhea?” What I think is really going on here is he has sexual dysfunction. He’s avoiding these women. He’s avoiding these encounters because there’s an issue here, and he’s covering it up by saying, “No, I actually avoided women.”

I just, again, took the artistic license of saying I think that might have been an issue for him. Of course, it factored into his fictional relationship with Jimmy Darmody’s mom, who cured him of that problem. But at least early on that was again something based on the real history of the guy, but extrapolated on by us.

Are there any things coming up in the new season that history buffs might pick up on that casual viewers may not?

Winter: Well, there’s a whole story line involving Washington, D.C. Again, if you know the history of Harry Daugherty and Jess Smith and how that story played out, you’ll see that play itself out over the course of the year. As 1923 progressed, the wagons were circling around those guys quite a bit in terms of them being revealed as the corrupt people they were. So, the Teapot Dome scandal started to heat up.

Their involvement in the Veteran’s Administration corruption, particularly their involvement with George Remus, and selling alcohol licenses to sell medicinal alcohol basically to the highest bidder. That sort of became public. Jess Smith, during the course of the year, started to have a pretty noticeable breakdown, and it ultimately resulted in his very suspicious death toward the middle of 1923. That plays out over the show.

There’s another historical character named Gaston Means who was a chief investigator for the Justice Department who reported directly to Harry Daugherty, who’s played by the actor Stephen Root. Means was basically a conman who somehow wangled his way into a job as a Pinkerton agent, and then ultimately into the Justice Department. He’s kind of a very colorful character, a Southerner, sort of half Foghorn Leghorn, half very smooth talker, and kind of dangerous, just a really interesting character. He plays into events in the White House as well.

Boardwalk Empire researcher Edward McGinty also plays Ward Boss Boyd on the show. Photo courtesy HBOHow do you go about finding Atlantic City experts to dig into the things you don’t know?

Winter: Ed was one of the first people I hired on the show. I met him in Los Angeles. It was one of those weird kismet kind of things. I had been developing the show, and I had spoken at Columbia University about 12 years ago when I was on The Sopranos. The guy who ran that evening was a grad student at that point. He and I stayed in touch over the years through e-mail. He happened to e-mail me as I was developing Boardwalk to ask a question about something, and he asked me what I was working on. I told him, and he said, “Oh, you got to meet my friend Ed McGinty. Ed is a fourth-generation Atlantic City native. He was actually one of the grad students who was there the night you spoke.”

So I met him for breakfast in Los Angeles, and he showed up with a shopping bag full of photographs, many of which were of his grandfather, who worked as a bellman in the actual Ritz-Carlton hotel when the real Nucky lived there. I said, “You’re hired. I mean, I don’t know for what, but you’ve got to come work with me.”

McGinty: Yeah, I pretty much showed up to the interview with every book about Atlantic City that I had. I showed up notating every photo that I could find and told him a story about each one. Then, at the end of the interview, I pulled out a photo with my grandmother and grandfather standing on the boardwalk, probably around 1922, and then a picture of my grandfather in a bellman’s outfit. He was the head bellman at the Ritz hotel, which is where Nucky lived. My father also worked there as well. He was a page boy. I have a little bit of bloodline to this story. It’s a birthright at this point.

Winter: Ed is basically in charge of the research, and also an actor on the show. He played one of Nucky’s ward bosses. He’s Ward Boss Boyd. He’s like a big, burly guy with a mustache.

“The name Boyd is actually a historical reference to one of Nucky’s political operatives who was a fishing buddy of my grandfather.”

— Edward McGinty

McGinty: I was in the writers’ room [because] any time they would even think about a question, I’d get an answer for them or give them an educated guess before they even finished the question. I was just in there all the time. But I do have an acting background. They were talking about a certain scene, and Terry just looked up at me, and he said, “With that face, you should be one of the ward bosses.” I thought he was kidding. I just let it go. But he called me late that Sunday night, and said, “No. I’m serious. You have to go audition in the morning.” I was terrified.

The name Boyd is actually a historical reference to one of Nucky’s political operatives who was a fishing buddy of my grandfather. I pulled that name out in order to give props to Boss [Al] Boyd. He was a ward boss, as well. Also another interesting connection is his wife was the librarian in Atlantic City, and she collected a lot of photos of Nucky, and photos of the time, and clippings, and that kind of thing. A lot of the archives at the Atlantic City Free Public Library, which has been indispensable to me, was built by Maria Boyd, who was Ward Boss Boyd’s wife.

Winter: Ed basically keeps us honest. I turn in a script, and 48 hours later I get a five-page detailed fact-check. He’ll call me on things, he’ll point things out, or just provide further information on anything that we’ve mentioned, even down to colloquialisms, or the geography of Atlantic City. I’ll throw out the street name and he’ll say, “This makes no sense at all. That’s a completely different part of town.”

McGinty: It’s changed over time. The first season was more about building the world. It was a lot of broad strokes. It was a lot of really just getting the show and the world built and the audience to see what this world was. That was a lot of photo research and that type of thing. And then, it became more specific as it went on. I would do a lot more really specific medical and law research, to the point I was like, “I could probably be a lawyer in 1921. If you’re going to sue somebody that backed into your Model T, I could probably do that.

The first season and a half, I was actually in the writers room and able to really make educated guesses and answer the questions as they came up. [After that] more of the answers would be harder to find, so I was spending more time in my office. I have an entire library in my office of books that I refer to.

Then when the first script comes out, I’ll go through that and look at specific references and slang and that type of thing and really just check up on everything to make sure that it’s in line with the period. Then I’ll send that information to the writers, and as they do rewrites, they’ll use most of that information to get everything in line. As they do rewrites, I’ll keep up on that. As the show gets shot or whatever, if something comes up in post-production, I’ll go down there or I’ll talk with them.

I’m also giving a lot of visual reference to the directors, especially the new directors that come in. I’ll give them a lot of photos of what’s in the script that they’re working on, historical photos. They have as much reference material to pull from as possible when they’re directing the episode.

Levi: I come to it in sort of three phases. One phase is if they have a question. If they have one, Ed will shoot me the question. I don’t consult with anybody but the library. Sometimes I know it, sometimes the library and I share information, but usually we come up with what he asks for. The other way that I come up with stuff is that I do a portfolio every year for Ed on what I think might be germane in that year that they wouldn’t know, or wouldn’t think of. I will say, “Here’s a bunch of stuff that I think is interesting from that year.” Finally, last year — and I hope to do it again this year — I have the opportunity to go speak with the writers and tell them what I hope they might look for in the next season, based on what I think might be interesting. That’s how I operate.

“We had a big debate about mustaches last year. By 1921, if you were under 30, you did not have a mustache. Your grandfather did that.”

— Terence Winter

What about non-story elements like costumes and visual aspects?

McGinty: Everybody on the production does a little bit of their own research. If they have a question outside of their purview, they ask me. But I’m particular. The art department has a woman named Miriam Schapiro and the production designer Bill Groom — they do a ton of their own research. This is period stuff, so we’re looking at black-and-white photos. They actually have to go and find paint chips of the houses, the color and that kind of thing. And then, the wardrobe department, John Dunn and Lisa Padovani, they’ll get old pieces of wardrobe, like a suit jacket.

Levi: When I went to the boardwalk [set] for the first time in Brooklyn, I was in tears it was so good. It was more the boardwalk of my childhood than the boardwalk of today, even though it was 1920. It was pristine, the colors were right, the arcs were right. Everything about it was perfect.

Winter: We have big meetings at the beginning of every season. We’re in the new year, and styles changed dramatically during the 1920s — hairstyles, makeup, all that stuff. There’s actually a chart I saw early on tracking the women’s hemline from 1920 to 1929. It’s just like it gets higher and higher every year. Everybody is as on top of this as I am.

I mean, we had a big debate about mustaches last year. By 1921, if you were under 30, you did not have a mustache. Your grandfather did that. A lot of that was actually driven by the Gillette Corporation and advertising. Gillette around 1920 came out with the safety razor, so men could shave themselves at home. Up until that point, most people got shaved at a barber shop. Now it was suddenly, you could go to a drug store, buy a razor, shave yourself. Gillette really started this ad campaign to make it so it wasn’t cool to have a mustache.

How did you determine that a trend started from that?

Winter: The thing that settled it was we had the 1920 Princeton yearbook, and there wasn’t a single mustache in the entire graduating class of 1920. If you looked at the graduating class of 1890, you’d see nothing but crazy beards and Rutherford B. Hayes-looking mutton chops and all that stuff.

But it also changes, too — just because it’s 2012 doesn’t mean that everybody out on the street is wearing clothes from 2012. I’ve got pants, I know, from 1995, probably in my closet. Unless my wife says, “You can’t wear those,” I will. That’s the reality of the world we live in. Not everybody’s up-to-date. New York City, of course, is more cutting-edge than Chicago. So, you’ll get people in Atlantic City that are a little more sophisticated. You go to Chicago and you’ll get people who are wearing clothes 20 years older or hairstyles from 20 years older. That’s the kind of stuff we pay attention to as well, because it looks fake if everybody looks like they stepped out of that month’s fashion magazine.

You’re dealing with gangsters, the wise guys, from that time. Some of them are really fashionable and some of them are old-school and keep the same suit.

Winter:Dutch Schultz, actually, apparently, he always used to fight with Lucky Luciano because Luciano would wear like $30 silk shirts and Dutch Schultz, he said, “You can get a perfectly good shirt for $1.50. Why the fuck do I need to spend $30 on a shirt?” They both had millions of dollars by then, but Schultz could never get his head around why do you need to spend money on clothes. Who cares? You’re not a woman.

“I also had to be the person that had to go to the Museum of Sex in New York for two straight days and watch all of the pornographic movies from the era. It was a dark point of my career.”

— Edward McGinty

What’s one of the craziest things you’d have to research?

McGinty: There’s a funny research story of Season 1. There was a scene where Nucky went away to Chicago. All the boys, the ward bosses and the sheriff, and some others, were all taking over his office. They happened to be watching a pornographic movie. I was in the scene and I was actually cranking the movie, and it gets jammed, and catches on fire. I also had to be the person that had to go to the Museum of Sex in New York for two straight days and watch all of the pornographic movies from the era. It was a dark point of my career.

What about the music on the show? Are you meticulous that it be a song that would’ve been playing in that place in that time period?

Winter: We’ve got a terrific music supervisor, Randy Poster, who does tons of the music selection for the show. I also, I do a lot of research myself about music on the internet, on YouTube. It’s just a great resource. There’s the season finale of Season 1: We had a song called “Life’s a Funny Proposition After All.” I found that. It was written by George M. Cohan. I found that on the internet. I thought it was really great. The Season 2 opener, there’s a song called, “After You Get What You Want, You Don’t Want It.” All correct to the period.

There have been times when I’ve rejected songs, or I found some that I thought were period-appropriate, and then I’d find out they were a couple years too late, and I won’t use them. That’s sort of the mandate, is it’s got to be appropriate to the period. Everything except, of course, our main title song, which is completely inappropriate to the period.

In the season opener, there’s a woman named Carrie Duncan, who is making a cross-continental flight. She’s not real is she?

Winter: No. We fictionalized her. The character we based her on actually taught Amelia Earhart had to fly, Neta Snook. We based Carrie Duncan on that. As you’ll see the episodes progress, you’ll learn more about the outcome of Carrie’s attempt at flight across country. We did fictionalize her, but she was based on a real female aviator of the period.

She’s inspirational to Margaret [played by Kelly MacDonald] in her personal journey. It really does represent going off into parts unknown on your own, and really just taking control of your own life, heading out fearlessly into what could be a very dangerous situation. Margaret is adrift by the end of that episode one, and that’s the thing that inspires her to move ahead and into a new direction.

McGinty: We thought that was really interesting. There was a lot of interest in aviation at the time. They put that up as an inspiration for Margaret, to where her story would go.

An Egyptian-themed party in Season 3 of Boardwalk Empire reflects the King Tut-inspired craze of the ’20s.Photo: Macall B. Polay/HBO

Do you ever pitch story lines or anything like that?

Levi: I, and I’m sure others, highlighted the Jack Dempsey association with Atlantic City. He trained there for the fight of the century and I highlighted that he became friends with the mayor. But I wouldn’t say I’m the only one who noted that. I’m sure it came from other people.

McGinty: I wouldn’t say I pitch stories. Early on, I was telling a lot of Atlantic City stories and that kind of thing to give them a feel for the place. I’m constantly, constantly reading. That’s where I’m getting any of the new information, because I don’t have a time machine. If something comes up that’s interesting, I’ll get it to Terry and the writers right away. I’m always giving them new bits of history that are part of the grand scheme of things. But I wouldn’t actually walk into the room and say, “Nucky should do this.”

“There are certain historical events that I would love to see happen: the stock market crash, the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre. These are things that happen in the future that I hope we get to deal with.”

— Terence Winter

Are you ever surprised when you see one of your suggestions in the show?

Levi: Were you shocked when they shot Jimmy Darmody? I was shocked too! But I also noticed they did it in front of the 1922 building of the monument by Carrère and Hastings by the high school [laughs]. That was the war memorial. I can’t say I’m the only one who sent that in, but I sure had a folder on it.

Has there ever been something from a script or story pitch that you wanted to do but ended up having to reject because it was just too much of an anachronism?

Winter: The episode where Nucky goes to outer space, we couldn’t do that [laughs]. We really wanted that, the jetpack episode. I think we probably stop ourselves before we get to the anachronistic stuff. There are certain historical events that I would love to see happen: the stock market crash, the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre. But it’s just not time yet. Even Capone — you wait for Al Capone to become the Al Capone that we know and love, and we’re still a couple seasons away from that guy. He’s still on the rise. He’s just, by the end of the season, is starting to come into his own as a boss, or as an equal to Johnny Torrio.

“King Tut’s tomb was just discovered a few months earlier, and that became the big rage. So Margaret is very much on the cutting edge by having an Egyptian themed New Year’s party.”

— Terence Winter

Any other Easter eggs you can share for the new season?

Winter: One of the things is the party, the opening New Year’s Eve party. [See video below.] It’s sort of an Egyptian theme. King Tut’s tomb was just discovered a few months earlier, and that became the big rage. Suddenly, you’ve got people dressing in Egyptian fashions. It was very influential in terms of art design, and furniture, and a lot of the decor from the early ’20s, from ’23, was Egyptian-inspired, and that was all inspired by King Tut.

That had just happened, I think in November ’22, so Margaret is very much on the cutting edge by having an Egyptian-themed New Year’s party. It’s a very oblique reference. The Egyptian thing became a sort of craze at that time, and just tracking what was going on in the world in the timeframe that we were depicting the show, that was one of the things that popped up. This had just happened. We were saying, “OK, we’re going to start in January ’23, what are current events? What are people talking about? What’s been on their minds? King Tut was the thing everybody talked about.

Even the King Tut novelty song that they perform at the show was [real]. The King Tut thing happened, and then, as is the case today, suddenly it becomes a pop culture phenomenon. They had a novelty song already that Sophie Tucker had recorded, and that’s the song they perform at the party.”

“Every now and again, some old-timer I see in a restaurant is like, ‘It wasn’t like that back then.’ I always say, ‘It’s a piece of historical fiction.'”

— Edward McGinty

Edward, do you have a lot of old family stories that you can rely on for storylines?

McGinty: My father would always tell these stories about how they would find a bunch of money in the marshland or something like that. Or they would wake up in the morning and there’d be crates of booze on their doorstep and that kind of thing. My father, he was born in the late ’20s, so he’s hearkening back to some earlier days. But my cousin recorded my grandfather telling a bunch of stories, and he talks about his days. He came up in vaudeville, and he came back and worked at the hotel. And so, he had all kinds of stories to tell.

My grandfather and my father, they were in cable television, and set up one of the first cable TV systems in the country in Atlantic City. They were literally in every single room, backroom, under every building in the city. They would tell a lot of stories about how there was these horse rooms and betting parlors and everything like that, because they would hook up things like the wire service for the horse races and that type of thing. They had all these inside stories about the politics that was going on and the gambling.

Edward and Vicki, being natives, do you feel a responsibility to do the city justice with the show?

McGinty: I do lose sleep at night with fears that something like that will come up on me. Even after it airs, there’s so many eyes on the show. I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before I’m called to task. That happens every now and again when I’m back in Atlantic City, which I get back there quite a bit. Every now and again, some old-timer I see in a restaurant is like, “It wasn’t like that back then.” I just have to say, I always say, “It’s a piece of historical fiction.”

Levi: Atlantic City, they love that I’m here, I mean forget about it. It’s going to be on my gravestone.